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A recording medium is a physical material that holds information. Newly created information is distributed and can be stored in four storage media, print, film, magnetic, and optical and seen or heard in four information flows, telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet[3] as well as being observed directly. Digital information is stored on electronic media in many different recording formats.

With electronic media, the data and the recording media are sometimes referred to as "software" despite the more common use of the word to describe computer software. With (traditional art) static media, art materials such as crayons may be considered both equipment and medium as the wax, charcoal or chalk material from the equipment becomes part of the surface of the medium.

A 2003 UC Berkeley report[3] estimated that in 2002 about 5 exabytes of new information was produced with 92 percent being stored on hard disk drives; this represents a doubling since 2000. The new information flow in 2002 was almost 18 exabytes, three and a half times more than was recorded with ninety eight percent of this information sent and received in telephone calls. The report noted that the storage of new information has been growing at a rate of over 30% a year (upper estimate, uncompressed) with dramatic growth in storage of new information since 2000 in every storage medium except film.

It is estimated that the year 2002 marked the beginning of the digital age for information storage, which means that this years marked the date where human kind started to store more information on digital, than on analog storage devices.[4] In the year 1986, merely 1% of the world's capacity to store information was in digital format, which grew to 3% by 1993, 25% in the year 2000, and exploded to 97% of the world's storage capacity by 2007.

In a 2007 study in Science, it was estimated that the world's technological capacity to store information in analog and digital devices grew from less than 3 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986, to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007,[4] doubling roughly every 3 years.[5]

A study published in 2011 estimated that the world's technological capacity to store information in analog and digital devices grew from less than three (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986, to 295 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007,[4] and doubles roughly every three years.[5]